Coty Q3 2025 Prepared Remarks Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 5, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Negative Sentiment: Q3 net revenues fell 3% like-for-like, driven by a 2.5% drop in Prestige sales (despite fragrance volume growth) and a 4.8% decline in Consumer Beauty, offsetting by flat volumes.
  • Positive Sentiment: Adjusted gross margin expanded by 120 basis points to 65.6% year-to-date, adjusted EBITDA margin grew 130 basis points in Q3, EPS up 33%, and leverage reduced to 3.2×, strengthening financial health.
  • Positive Sentiment: Achieved $40 million of productivity savings in Q3 and is on track for $120 million in FY25, plus a newly announced $130 million fixed cost savings program, targeting total run-rate savings of ~$370 million.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Anticipates low-$100 million tariff headwinds in FY26, mitigated by elevated U.S. inventory, planned mid-single digit price increases, supplier diversification, and potential U.S. production shifts.
  • Neutral Sentiment: FY25 guidance forecasts a 2% like-for-like sales decline, flat EBITDA margins, $0.49–$0.50 EPS, and $300 million free cash flow, with management expecting gradual improvement in FY26 via blockbuster launches and e-commerce growth.
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Earnings Conference Call
Coty Q3 2025 Prepared Remarks
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Olga Levinzon
Olga Levinzon
SVP Investor Relations and Head of M&A at Coty

Coty's Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us today for the prepared remarks portion of Coty's third quarter fiscal 2025 earnings. On Wednesday, May 8, 2025, at approximately 8:00 A.M. Eastern Time or 2:00 P.M. Central European Time, we will hold a separate live Q&A session on our results, which you can access via our Investor Relations website. Joining me for our presentation are Sue Nabi, Coty's CEO, and Laurent Mercier, Coty's CFO. Before I hand the call over to Sue, I would like to remind you that many of the comments today may contain forward-looking statements. Please refer to Coty's earnings release and the reports filed with the SEC, where the company lists factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements.

Olga Levinzon
Olga Levinzon
SVP Investor Relations and Head of M&A at Coty

In addition, except as noted, the discussion of Coty's financial results and Coty's expectations reflect certain adjustments as specified in the non-GAAP financial measures section of the company's release. Thank you.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

Thank you, Olga. Welcome, everyone. Fiscal 25 has been a pivotal and transitional year for Coty. As the consumer and retail environment of the past few quarters became even more challenging in the third quarter, and we took more proactive measures to clean up the baseline of our business to prepare for a healthier fiscal 26. Let me take a few moments to focus on the current backdrop and how our company is navigating this context with multiple levers to fuel improved trends into next year and beyond. It's important to properly frame the challenges we are facing in Q3 and even more so in Q4. For our prestige business, fiscal 24 was an exceptional year, with several Coty blockbuster launches at a time when the prestige fragrance market was growing double digits.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

At the same time, the level of Coty fragrance stock and retailers exiting the year was elevated as a result of strong sell-out trends for our brands, as well as retailer incentives, particularly in the U.S. With this backdrop, the combination in fiscal 2025 of a slowing Prestige fragrance market, our launch calendar this year dominated by extensions rather than major innovations, and the need to deplete elevated inventory at the retailers has driven a triple negative effect on our business, which we are fully focused on correcting by the end of this fiscal year. In Consumer Beauty this year, we have begun recalibrating our business in response to diverging market trends between cosmetics on the one hand and fragrances on the other hand, taking into account our relative strengths.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

While this is the right strategy for our business, it will take some time to drive a net benefit at the full division level. At the same time, icc driving Free Cash Flow, and, of course, deleveraging, and we are much more strongly positioned to navigate the current complex dynamics, including tariffs and broader macroeconomic uncertainties, supported by the strategic, operational, and financial fundamentals within the business that we've worked so hard to significantly strengthen over the last four years. While we are not satisfied with our revenue performance, these improved fundamentals, coupled with our multi-pronged strategy for accelerating innovation, distribution, and efficiencies, give us confidence that business trends should gradually improve as we progress through fiscal 2026. Our third quarter net revenues declined 3% like for like. In Prestige, sales declined 2.5%.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

Importantly, Prestige fragrance volumes continued to grow positively in the third quarter, while volumes for the division declined 3% due to pressure in Prestige makeup. In Consumer Beauty, sales declined 4.8%, with flat volumes supported by volume growth in Brazil, offset by decline in color cosmetics. Let's take now a minute to frame the current dynamics at play. Overall, beauty growth has decelerated from the first half of fiscal 2025, driven by softer consumer demand due to microeconomic uncertainty and recessionary concerns. While some parts of the beauty market have been under pressure, consumer demand for Prestige fragrances continues to grow. At the same time, the category experienced some normalization, with growth slowing to a mid-single-digit level in Q3 on a comparable basis, which is a bit lower than the high single-digit growth we saw in Q2.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

Within this category backdrop, Coty has been significantly impacted this year by the lapping of prior year blockbuster launches. For us, fiscal 2024 was a fantastic year as we launched multiple top-performing blockbuster fragrance innovations, including Burberry Goddess, Marc Jacobs Daisy Wild, and Cosmic Kylie Jenner. On the flip side, our fiscal 2025 launches were largely franchise-building extensions of last year's blockbuster innovations, including Burberry Goddess Intense, Marc Jacobs Daisy Wild Intense, and Cosmic Kylie Jenner 2.0, which traditionally reached roughly half of the same sales levels of the prior year's innovations. This lapping impact was compounded by the level of trade inventory at retailers exiting fiscal 2024 as customers stocked up on our brands in response to the strong sell-out trends and retailer incentives, particularly in the U.S. market.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

The combination of these two related factors has resulted in several points of headwind to our Prestige sales growth in fiscal 25. Additionally, the strong momentum and share gains by Amazon and TikTok Shop in beauty are putting additional pressure on brick-and-mortar retailers to reduce their inventory. Now, on the Consumer Beauty side, we've seen consistent slowing in the global mass beauty market in the recent quarters. In the third quarter, global category growth turned negative, declining by a slow single-digit percentage. These declines are driven by continued worsening of the mass color cosmetics category, which declined by a mid-single-digit percentage in the third quarter, with the U.S. market under the most pressure and somewhat better trends in the rest of the world.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

In this challenging mass color cosmetics backdrop, sell-out for our consumer beauty business was somehow below the market in Q3, weighed down by our outsized presence in mass color cosmetics, which was the weakest performing category, but also by our efforts to actively recalibrate our portfolio approach. In color cosmetics, we are building a dual engine of scaled innovation across all major brands, coupled with our agile innovation strategy to capitalize on trending products with a concept-to-launch timeline of six to eight months. In tandem, we are accelerating advocacy marketing behind color cosmetics, which has a higher ROI to free funding for mass fragrances, advertising, and advocacy, and that the figures so far mirror this transition from one model to another as we remain focused on diversifying our categories within consumer beauty division.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

We have accelerated our efforts to balance out our Consumer Beauty division in response to the underlying market dynamics and in recognition of our areas of strength and, of course, profitability. Color cosmetics was a little over 60% of our Consumer Beauty sales in fiscal 2024, but the full category has been more challenged. There has been more competition, and the subcategory is much less profitable for Coty. On the other hand, mass fragrances continue to boom. We are the number one player in the category, and our profits in mass fragrances, in particular, are much higher. With these factors in mind, we have been actively diversifying our portfolio. As you can see on the slide, fiscal year to date, we've grown by 3% our proposed proportion of fragrances, skin, and body care within our Consumer Beauty business, approximately to reach 41%, with these categories growing mid-single-digit percentage.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

At the market level, our performance in the U.S. has been especially challenged. The U.S. market accounted for the vast majority of our Like-for-Like sales decline in the third quarter and was the biggest headwind in our fiscal year-to-date results. In contrast, in our other major stronghold, Europe, our fiscal 2025 sales trends have been relatively stronger, and our sell-out performance in prestige fragrances has been in line with the underlying market. In response, we are activating plans to improve our execution in the U.S. Specifically, we recently announced a new U.S. market leadership, as well as a more scaled and agile regional setup across the organization, with the new regional leader in the area fully focused on significantly improving our performance in the U.S., empowered to accelerate decision-making, and, of course, faster execution.

Sue Nabi
Sue Nabi
CEO at Coty

In summary, we're taking important steps to position the company for success even in this volatile time. Let me now turn the call over to Laurent to discuss our financial results before I close with Coty's plan of attack for fiscal 2026 and beyond.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Thank you, Sue. 2025 is indeed a transition year for beauty and for Coty, characterized by slowing demand in some areas, significant uncertainty, and active interventions in our business and operations to create a healthier baseline for growth. While this is having an impact on our near-term sales trends, our financial equation is now stronger than it has been in the last four years, and we will see outsized benefits from our healthier debt levels and cash generation. I want to underscore that we are laser-focused on protecting our profitability, driving free cash flow, and deleveraging, even as we navigate the complex dynamics, including tariffs and broader macroeconomic uncertainty. Beginning with our ongoing productivity programs, in Q3, we delivered savings of approximately $40 million, up from approximately $35 million in Q2 and approximately $20 million in Q1, with most of the savings in gross margin-related areas.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

In total, we continue to target productivity savings of approximately $120 million in fiscal year 2025, and we are committed to delivering productivity savings in fiscal year 2026 and beyond, primarily in supply chain and procurement, with a similar annual savings level as fiscal year 2025. The additional $130 million fixed cost savings program we recently announced will come on top of this. While we saw sales headwinds this quarter, we remained focused on fueling healthy gross margin expansion. In the first nine months of fiscal year 2025, our adjusted gross margin was 65.6%, reflecting very strong expansion of 120 basis points fueled by supply chain savings, including procurement savings and productivity gains, excess and obsolescence reduction, a net benefit from carryover pricing, and strong discipline as it relates to promotional activity, even in the face of quite significant discounting from some of our peers.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Our adjusted gross margin in Q3 declined by 50 basis points, broadly consistent with our expectations, reflecting an anticipated normalization of the quite elevated gross margin levels in the prior year's third quarter. We continue to expect another year of steady gross margin expansion in fiscal year 2025, supported by our strong delivery in the first half. As part of our focus on maintaining a healthy business equation and supporting our strategy over the short and long term, we continue to invest behind our brands and initiatives. We maintain the high 20s A&CP percentage in Q3, up year on year. Coty's adjusted EBITDA grew 2% in Q3. As a result, we delivered 130 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion in Q3, with very strong margin expansion in prestige.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Fiscal year to date, our Adjusted EBITDA expanded 3%, resulting in an EBITDA margin of 20.6%, which was up a strong 110 basis points year over year. The strong EBITDA growth, despite lower reported sales, was supported by a combination of cost reductions as part of our All-in-to-Win program, as well as shorter-term cost controls, including the mechanical reduction of variable compensation as a result of the lower than planned financial results. As we look to fiscal year 26, our recently announced fixed cost reduction program and annual productivity savings give us strong counterweights to offset the restoration of variable compensation and the portion of tariffs not absorbed by pricing, as we aim to deliver profit growth next year.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

In the first nine months of fiscal 2025, our interest expense declined by $26 million year on year to $164 million, reflecting the lower debt balance and the lower cost of debt. Based on the trajectory of our deleveraging and the current interest rate backdrop, we expect interest expense to decline further in fiscal year 2026, driving additional EPS accretion. Our Q3 EPS, excluding the equity swap, grew by 33% year over year to $0.08, and our fiscal year-to-date EPS grew 17% to $0.48. This very strong EPS growth was fueled by solid profit expansion and much lower interest expense. Our fiscal year-to-date EPS growth benefited from a discrete tax hit in the prior year totaling $0.03, which did not repeat this year.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

While lower shipments and lower cash profits weighed on our free cash flow, we delivered free cash flow through the first nine months of fiscal year 2025 of $243 million. In March, we also closed on the sale of our 20% stake in the SKKN BY KIM brand, part of our ongoing portfolio review efforts. The free cash flow generation, coupled with the profit from the SKKN BY KIM divestiture, offset the negative impacts from Forex and the cash prepayment to the banks in connection with our equity swap following the pullback in our stock price in recent quarters. All in all, we ended Q3 with leverage at 3.2 times, down 0.1 turns from the start of the fiscal year. Our disciplined approach to profit expansion, cash generation, and debt paydown have fueled the significant reduction in our leverage over the past four years.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

While in fiscal 2021, our leverage was close to seven times, we ended Q3 with leverage of 3.2 times. Now, in the current more complex economic environment and outlook, our significantly lower leverage and stronger balance sheet assures that we are more strongly positioned for any macro scenario. We remain fully focused on continuing to deleverage through strong cash protection plans and EBITDA expansion. While we have $1.1 billion of debt maturities coming due in calendar year 2026, this can be addressed through any combination of refinancing, our seasonally strong free cash flow at the end of each calendar year, and/or our revolver, as we have ample available liquidity under our revolver and cash on hand of $1.8 billion. Now, looking at the other assets available to us, we can confirm that the performance of the Wella business remains strong.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

At the same time, we are mindful of current equity market conditions. So, while we remain fully committed to divesting our stake in Wella, the current backdrop may delay monetization of our stake. And consistent with our approach to divesting the SKKN business when the opportunity came, we will continue to evaluate our portfolio. Let me also take a minute to address the tariff topic, which we know is top of mind. As evidenced in the last several months, the global geopolitical and tariff situation remains quite fluid, further adding to the broader uncertainty and decline in consumer sentiment. Having said that, Coty is relatively better positioned than many consumer companies. As a reminder, approximately 30% of our sales are in North America, including approximately 13% in Consumer Beauty and approximately 17% in Prestige. For Consumer Beauty, our products are primarily manufactured locally in the U.S.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

On the other hand, our prestige fragrances are manufactured primarily in Europe, where we have the world's largest fragrance manufacturing facility. This is consistent with our beauty peers, who also produce fragrances primarily in Europe. Our finished goods sourcing from China is negligible aside from local sales. Having said that, our teams have been planning for several different scenarios with action plans to minimize the potential impact on Coty, and we are actively planning mitigation actions to address the impacts of tariffs on our business. Under the current tariff framework, the biggest areas of potential headwinds for us are first, prestige fragrances shipped to the U.S. from our Barcelona plant, and second, sourcing various components and marketing materials from China. We have multiple levers to balance or minimize these tariff headwinds.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

For prestige fragrance, we have built up inventory on hand in the U.S. that will carry us through at least the end of fiscal year 2025. Pricing remains an additional lever, particularly in the relatively priced inelastic prestige beauty market, and we are on track for a mid-single-digit price increase in the U.S. starting this summer. And finally, if it becomes more definitive that these tariffs will stay in place for the long term, we will consider transferring some production to the U.S. to mitigate the impact of tariffs on imports from Europe, which will carry lower investments and building a new site. While our sourcing of finished goods from China is negligible, we do source some components and marketing materials from the country.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Therefore, as part of our mitigation efforts, we will resource suppliers in other countries over time to broaden our supplier base in each component and have already begun this process of bringing new suppliers online. Importantly, we are contemplating all of these mitigation plans while at the same time being conscious to minimize disruptions to our operations, distribution partners, and the long-term health of our business, especially if the tariffs are more transitory in nature. Combined, based on the current anticipated tariff landings, we see a gross headwind from tariffs in the low $100 million level, with minimal impact this quarter due to our proactive inventory build and an impact step-up in fiscal year 2026. Before we transition to our fiscal year 2025 guidance, I wanted to take a minute to help frame the current backdrop both outside and inside Coty.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

From a category standpoint, there has been some sequential improvement in April in both the prestige fragrance and mass beauty categories, though we believe much of it relates to the phasing of Easter, which occurred in March last year and in April this year. For Coty, as part of fiscal year 25, being a transition year, both in Q3 and even more so in Q4, we are continuing to clean the baseline, including assuring that retailer inventories are right-sized relative to the current demand trends, that we are rebalancing our resources within consumer beauty to overdrive our profit engines while scaling our cosmetics innovations, and that we remain disciplined in our promotional activity to protect the health of our brands.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

All of these efforts are targeted to prepare for a gradual improvement in sales trends over the course of fiscal year 26, underpinned by multiple levers that Sue will discuss shortly. And at the same time, as we have discussed, we are actively intervening in key areas of the business to set us on stronger footing into fiscal year 26 and beyond. This includes stepped-up fixed cost savings and productivity savings to protect the P&L and fuel our brands, and making concrete changes in our organizational setup and leadership in key markets like the U.S. to improve our execution and sell-out trends. With this backdrop in mind, let me share our updated guidance for fiscal year 25. The continuation of current category trends, coupled with our active interventions to clean up the baseline of the business, are driving our expectation for a high single-digit like-for-like decline in Q4 sales.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

This translates to a 2% decline in our fiscal year 2025 like-for-like sales. On the reported revenue side, we see a mid-single-digit decline in reported sales, which embeds a roughly 3% headwind from Forex. We continue to expect continued expansion in fiscal year 2025 gross margins to approximately 65%, consistent with our prior outlook. We remain on track to deliver EBITDA margin expansion at the lower end of our guidance range, with approximately 70 basis points of expansion to roughly 18.5%. This translates to roughly flattish EBITDA in fiscal year 2025, which includes a low single-digit headwinds from Forex. At the same time, the strengthening of our balance sheet is helping drive significant improvement in our interest expense year over year to the low $200 million level.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

We are also on track to end the year with a lower tax rate in the mid-20s%, down from the high 20s% in fiscal year 2024. The benefit from both of these below-the-line levers is supporting our relatively stronger EPS delivery, as we see fiscal year 2025 EPS of $0.49-$0.50 near the low end of our prior guidance range. On the cash flow side, we now expect fiscal year 2025 free cash flow of approximately $300 million. While our EBITDA outlook is only incrementally lower than our outlook a few months ago, this P&L outlook includes a benefit from lower variable compensation, which is a mechanical result of the lower fiscal year 2025 outlook.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

As the variable compensation gets paid in October, our actual cash profit underpinning our free cash flow is tracking lower in fiscal year 2025, but should see a benefit in fiscal year 2026 in light of the lower compensation accrual this year. Finally, we expect our leverage at the end of fiscal year 2025 to be relatively in line with our leverage at the end of Q3. Before I hand the call back over to Sue, I want to take a moment to reiterate that Coty's financial position is the strongest it has been in many years, so we are well equipped to maintain our performance in a variety of scenarios. We have spent the last four years substantially improving our business fundamentals. Here, you can see a snapshot of our financial delivery.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2025, our like-for-like sales are on track to grow at a 9% CAGR. Since fiscal 2021, we have grown our adjusted gross margin by approximately 125 basis points each year, and we are on track for continued expansion in fiscal year 2025 to roughly 65%. We also delivered very strong profitability improvement. Our EBITDA margin expanded by 130 basis points from fiscal 2021 to fiscal 2024, reaching 17.8%, and is on track to reach roughly 18.5% in fiscal year 2025. This equates to an expected EBITDA CAGR of plus 9% through the end of fiscal year 2025, squarely in line with the targets we laid out four years ago. Finally, our EPS delivery has resulted in an expected CAGR of close to 80% between fiscal year 2021 and fiscal year 2025.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

In fact, it is noteworthy it that we delivered this very strong revenue CAGR and margin expansion in the last four years in the context of a very constrained P&L, where a key priority was deleveraging our balance sheet. The progress we have made confirms our focus on financial discipline, which positions Coty well despite all of the headwinds we are facing. At the same time, in light of the current macroeconomic and tariff uncertainty, we have made the decision to postpone our investor day by at least a few months, which we had previously targeted to hold this June. With that, I will turn it back over to Sue to discuss our plan of attack for fiscal year 26 and beyond. Thank you, Laurent.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Our improved fundamentals, coupled with the multi-pronged strategy for accelerating innovation, distribution, and efficiencies, give us measured confidence that business trends should gradually improve over the course of fiscal year 26. This is coupled with strong plans to protect profitability, cash flow, and the leveraging even in the face of tariffs or broader microeconomic uncertainty. First, it's important to remind everyone that beauty has always been and will remain, by the way, a highly resilient category. Across economic cycles, beauty has remained resilient. In fact, even in periods of microeconomic slowdown or regular challenges, global beauty demand has grown 3%-4% most years over the past decade and a half. Despite the current backdrop, this reinforces our confidence in the category. The U.S. market is a perfect embodiment of this.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Even as economic sentiment has fallen in the U.S. in the last few years, prestige beauty sales have continued to grow. While much of fiscal 2025 innovations were extensions, providing a modest contribution to net revenues, entering fiscal 2026, we are reigniting our pipeline of blockbuster launches and market expansions. In fiscal 2026, we have exciting launch and distribution initiatives planned, which we anticipate will improve sales trends even if the current complex macro and retailer backdrop holds. We will have a major launch under a top prestige brand in the first half of fiscal 2026 and another major launch under another top prestige brand in the second half of the year. We also have sizable distribution expansion plans. At the start of fiscal 2025, we launched Chloé in the U.S. market with very positive results, and this market is now Chloé's number four market.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Importantly, the brand had exceptional growth, including over 15% growth in Q3 and fiscal year to date, with strong momentum in both the core fragrance line and the ultra-premium collection called Atelier des Fleurs. Building on this success, in the fall, we will be expanding another one of our top brands into the U.S., effectively doubling the brand's addressable market. We will also capture more of the ultra-premium fragrance market with our ultra-premium fragrance collections, including Infiniment Coty Paris, Atelier des Fleurs, Boss The Collection, Burberry Signatures, and the new Jil Sander Collection. Chloé's Atelier des Fleurs ultra-premium collection supported the brand's strong double-digit % growth in the third quarter and fiscal year to date. And Infiniment Coty Paris, our internally developed niche fragrance brand, continues to resonate with consumers in the U.S. and in European markets.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

As we mentioned earlier, we are focused on expanding our mass fragrance business, and we are actively supporting the expansion of mass fragrances with stepped-up media investment to overdrive our growth in the category. This has paid off. The Adidas Vibes Collection, Coty's biggest consumer beauty fragrance launch in the last 10 years, drove over 20% growth in Adidas fragrances in the third quarter and fiscal year to date. In addition, across each of our key markets, Adidas fragrance is gaining market share. With the outstanding initial results for the Adidas Vibes launch, our goal for fiscal 2026 and beyond is to make Adidas Vibes into a full-fledged platform, and we will share additional details in the coming months and quarters on the new products we will be launching under Vibes. We also continue to invest in our skincare strategy.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Lancaster delivered net revenue growth fiscal year to date, supported by the brand's unique positioning as the photoaging prevention and repair expert. Philosophy remains focused on its social media advocacy strategy, leaning into the brand's unique retinol complex patents. And Orveda continued to steadily expand its distribution footprint and generated triple-digit % retail sales growth in the first nine months of fiscal 2025. Our third step in our plan of attack for fiscal 2026 is our push to capture new opportunities and adjacencies to supplement our core growth. We have many different scenting-related initiatives in the pipeline for fiscal 2026. We have co-created multiple scenting lines with key retailers globally with locked-in distribution. We will be more actively extending our brands from traditional eau de parfum and eau de toilette to fragrance mists for both our prestige and consumer beauty brands.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

We will be expanding our offer of smaller formats fragrances, including pen sprays, to capture consumers who are either more value-conscious or looking to expand their fragrance wardrobes, and we will continue to expand distribution of value-priced fragrances in emerging markets. As part of our strategy to reach new audiences, our latest campaign for Davidoff Cool Elixir is anchored in fantasy and gaming, targeted at teen males. Let's take a look at the new campaign. Davidoff Cool Elixir. The treasure is worth the fight. Cool Elixir, the new oud treasure. Additionally, in calendar year 2026, we are on track to launch Marc Jacobs Makeup with a truly distinctive and craveable assortment. Next, in a time of rapid shifts in retail channels, we will continue to overdrive the growth channels and win with the winners.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Our momentum in e-comm in both divisions is undisputed, with e-comm revenues reaching $1 billion this past year, and with e-comm sales for beauty outpacing brick-and-mortar sales across group countries and across price points, we are continuing to win share in this critical channel. In the past quarter, our sellout in e-comm has been well ahead of the beauty e-comm growth in both prestige and consumer beauty. While our selling has been below these levels, our sustained outperformance positions us well in e-comm into fiscal 26. One example of our e-comm success has been our multi-year partnership with Amazon, where we have been active with both our consumer beauty brands and some of our prestige brands for several years, well ahead of key competitors. We're excited to share that another one of our brands will be launching on Amazon in Q1 fiscal 26.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

We are also exploring the TikTok Shop channel for our brands, particularly as a driver of consumer excitement and a halo on our core channels. Our first test was in the U.K. under Rimmel, with positive early results, as our limited quantity activation covering three Rimmel SKUs sold out in a short period of time and fueled EMV of close to $2.3 million. Importantly, outside of the sales on TikTok Shop itself, the buzz generated by this activation on TikTok provided a significant halo for Rimmel across all channels, resulting in the brand reporting flat market share in the U.K. for the first time in three years. We are building on these learnings with TikTok Shop activations for CoverGirl planned in the coming month. We continue to fuel our brand through strong momentum in social media advocacy.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Our prestige brands across fragrance and skincare categories are resonating online, supported by this advocacy strategy. For example, Hugo Boss' global earned media value linked to influencer activity grew nearly four times, while skincare brand Lancaster's European EMV grew over 10 times year over year. Among our consumer beauty brands, mass fragrance brand Adidas' global earned media value linked to influencer activity grew five times, while color cosmetics brands Bourjois and Rimmel each grew by 40% and 9% respectively. Importantly, as we ramp up our focus on advocacy across our brands, our focus is on recommendation and durable advocacy rather than simple virality, which is often short-lived. Next, we are laser-focused on reigniting growth and profit expansion in our consumer beauty division.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

In fiscal 2025, we actively began rebalancing our division and mix to overdrive the categories that are much higher margin or higher growth and where we have clear leadership, namely mass fragrances and Brazil skin and body care. As we enter fiscal 2026 in the more challenged mass cosmetics market, we are putting in place the building blocks to improve our performance through a dual engine of scaled innovation and agile on-trend innovation, all powered by a digital advocacy model. In parallel, we will continue to fuel our smaller but more profitable pillars with multiple launches and distribution expansions in mass fragrances.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

And we will generate additional capacity to fuel these multiple initiatives and increase media investment through a combination of cost-saving programs and the savings generated from being more deliberate and focused in our launches, thereby not spreading our funds over too many initiatives and triggering gross-to-net pressure from small launches. Here is an example of the scaled innovation process in action. In Q3 last year, we launched the very unique CoverGirl Simply Ageless Essence Foundation, which has continued to do well. And last quarter, we launched the same formulation under our European-centric brands, namely Max Factor and Bourjois.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

We have done some limited technology platforming in our cosmetics portfolio in the last few years, but we have really stepped up in fiscal 2025 and even more planned in fiscal 2026, as our goal is to both increase such platform launches and to launch new technology under multiple brands at the same time in non-overlapping regions to really maximize the halo to consumers discussions. Here we have an example of one of our agile innovations, the Rimmel Thrill Seeker Lip Ink Pens. We co-created this innovation with influencers capitalizing on viral social media trends. The early results were very promising at Superdrug, a key retailer in the U.K., where we had the highest-ever exclusive sales under Rimmel.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

This innovation and collaboration reinforces the success of our agile innovation model and strategy to capitalize on on-trend products powered by our digital advocacy model as we work to recalibrate our consumer beauty portfolio approach. A key part of our strategy going forward is our focus on savings, profit, and cash protection in order to drive the business even as the market experiences turbulence. Importantly, we have delivered over $800 million in productivity savings since fiscal 2021, while also driving the core fundamentals of our business, including a like-for-like CAGR of 13%, over 400 basis points of gross margin expansion, and 130 basis points of Adjusted EBITDA margin expansion.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

As we recently announced, we are now entering our next phase of All-in-to-Win, a strategic initiative to establish a simplified and scaled operating model to reduce complexity across functions and markets and sharpen our focus on top innovation and market priorities. We are streamlining our organizational structure across key markets to unlock operational efficiencies, reduce duplication, and better align with the consolidation in the local and regional retail landscape. These market organizations will be part of a more scaled and agile regional setup, with the new regional leaders empowered to accelerate decision-making and faster execution in keeping with the rapid evolution in today's global beauty markets. Next, we are consolidating and centralizing support function activities to better align with these new regional structures.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

We are also step-changing our innovation impact by identifying key launch priorities early in the process and focusing organizational efforts and resources into fewer and more impactful initiatives, which will be supplemented by smaller agile launches to capture short-term opportunities. Finally, we are structurally reducing non-people fixed costs across all areas of spend to maximize investment behind our brands in the most efficient way possible. This newly announced next phase of our All-in-to-Win program is expected to generate annual fixed cost savings of approximately $130 million before taxes over the next two years. This is in addition to approximately $240 million of productivity savings during the same period, resulting in total savings of around $370 million. We anticipate that this initiative will impact approximately 700 positions following all necessary regulations and will result in a one-time cash cost of $80 million split evenly between fiscal 26 and fiscal 27.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

In total, this will bring the cumulative savings under our All-in-to-Win program to approximately $1.2 billion between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2027. Finally, as part of our ambition to be a leader in sustainability, let me highlight several key sustainability milestones. We are very proud to share that Coty was recently upgraded by the two leading ESG rating agencies. Our MSCI ESG rating was upgraded to A from BB, reflecting enhanced performance across several key ESG areas. In addition, our MSCI Carbon Footprint Score remained at the maximum level, demonstrating the company's ongoing commitment to minimizing its environmental impact. Coty also improved its sustainability ESG risk rating, moving from medium risk to low risk, which places Coty as the lead amongst global beauty companies and third out of 104 household products companies as rated by Sustainalytics.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

These achievements underscore Coty's dedication to advancing sustainability across all aspects of our business. With these various strategies in place to boost our performance in fiscal 2026 and balance out potential external headwinds, whether tied to macro pressures, consumer demand slowdown, or tariffs, let me share a framework for how we think about fiscal 2026. Assuming no significant change in the current category trends, we would expect like-for-like sales trends to gradually improve over the course of fiscal 2026 relative to the low Q4 fiscal 2025 like-for-like trend. Both the first and second half should benefit from a strong innovation pipeline, some distribution expansion, and incremental contribution from the pricing we're putting in place to partially offset tariff impact. However, the comparison base should get progressively easier as we proceed through the year.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

On the profit side, based on the current announced tariff framework, we would expect a relatively balanced net headwind between the first and the second half, taking into account timing of cost recognition and timing of various sourcing adjustments. We should see some savings contribution in the first half and a higher contribution in the second one, though in both cases, this will be partially offset by the reinstatement of a variable compensation, which has a bigger year-over-year negative impact on profit in the second half. In sum, we would expect somewhat lower EBITDA in the first half and higher EBITDA in the second half, with the full-year EBITDA targeted to increase. In summary, we see 2025 as a transition year.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

In Prestige, we are absorbing the triple headwind of a slowing fragrance market, lapping a blockbuster innovation year, and depleting elevated retailer inventory, all of which was particularly acute in the U.S. market. We are laser-focused on entering fiscal 2026 with alignment between sell-in and sell-out to create a healthy baseline for growth. In Consumer Beauty, we have begun recalibrating our business in response to diverging market trends between cosmetics on the one hand and fragrances on the other hand, taking into account our relative strengths. Our goal is to strengthen our cosmetics business while making it more profitable, while in parallel overdriving our mass fragrance business where we have leadership and a strong margin profile.

Laurent Mercier
Laurent Mercier
Group CFO at Coty

Importantly, we are in control of our destiny and are already making the changes needed to address many of these challenges with new leadership in the U.S. and organizational structure to drive faster changes and improved execution and a robust cost-saving program to protect our P&L and increase our firepower to accelerate our business. Our multi-pronged plan of attack to accelerate innovation, distribution, and efficiencies gives us measured confidence that business trends should improve over the course of fiscal 2026. With our brand desirability and equity at the highest levels in years, a pipeline of initiatives, which is the strongest in five years, and our margins, profit, debt, and leverage all significantly improved versus four years ago, we have the levers to protect our profitability and cash flow in a variety of microeconomic scenarios. Coty remains well-positioned to succeed and outperforming in the coming years.

Executives
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